Russian Agriculture Early in the 20th Century: Social Peculiarities and Spatial Distinctions

ByGrigory Ioffe, Tatyana Nefedova

The fact that about one-fourth of peasant households held less than 5.5 hectares of land — given an average household size of about six members this is equivalent to less than one hectare per person — created an explosive social environment, the incubator for the political shocks of the beginning of the century. Power utilized in Russian agriculture increased fourfold in the late 1950s compared to 1913 because of collective and state farms' 0.5 million tractors and 300,000 grain harvesting combines. So Stalin's plans of ensuring technological renovation in agriculture were finally being fulfilled. This chapter explains the smoother, more evolutionary trend Russian agriculture experienced between the 1960-1980, that is, before the new breach of continuity, market reforms of the 1990s, occurred. It focuses on the three aspects of this evolution: organization and management; the geography of agricultural output and the production factors.